Back to: Dickens A Christmas Carol and the Bible
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.
Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including — which is a bold word — the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven years’ dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change — not a knocker, but Marley’s face.
Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part or its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half-expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley’s pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said ‘Pooh, pooh!’ and closed it with a bang.
1. Scrooge at Home
Scrooge at home
Marley’s face in the knocker. In another flash, Marley’s face appears on the door knocker, almost as if the “dead” man had residence there and was inviting his old friend in for a talk
“Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that: darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked”
Scrooge has his defenses, however. He has thoroughly divested himself of anything that could be thought irrational or supernatural. Being a businessman with no interest—as he informed his visitors just that afternoon—in anything not related to his business, he has shut himself off from all other realms of knowledge. He is, in effect, imprisoned in his world, as Marley had been. Now, faced with something unsettling that Scrooge does not understand, he goes inside. With the door closed and double-locked, Scrooge reverts to gestures and actions performed by scared children; almost comically we watch as he looks under the bed and under each separate piece of furniture in each room to be certain no menacing entity awaits hi
Matthew 7:13
-Dickens here echoes the biblical teaching that the way of darkness, or sin, often appears to be the easier, less costly way. “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it” (Matthew 7:13). 3 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy[a] that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant’s cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn’t have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge’s dip.
2. Scrooge and locked doors
It becomes possible in this light to think of Scrooge as a sick man who must enter a different world to activate a process of self-healing.
Scrooge locks his doors, but the redemption’s story can not be barred out of his life. No locked doors can keep the lessons of the scriptures out. When he does not seek redemption, redemption seeks out Scrooge.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guards, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaohs’ daughters; Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts — and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley’s head on every one.
‘Humbug!’ said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine merchant’s cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.
3. Bells
Bell -Conspicuous for its vagueness, the description of the bell that heralds Marley (as bells act as divine heralds throughout Carol) seems to contain another pun—one critical of Scrooge’s faith. The “disused” bell (voice) used to communicate “for some purpose now forgotten” (loss of faith) with the “highest story” (the heavenly realms)
The bells that suddenly ring out are reminiscent of church bells calling those seeking meaning and salvation to congregate and spread the message.
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.
4. Marleys Ghost
Marley’s ghost comes from below, the symbolic location of hell
‘It’s humbug still!’ said Scrooge. ‘I won’t believe it.’
His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried ‘I know him; Marley’s Ghost!’ and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.
5. Locks and Chain
When Marley makes himself fully present to Scrooge, he appears in locks and chains, symbolizing his self-imprisonment. Scrooge doesn’t realized that he has been himself. Scrooge has just come from three separate encounters—with his nephew, his clerk, and his visitors soliciting for the poor. Each visitor has made a similar request of Scrooge—that he, in effect, open himself up to others, unlock his heart and mind, and free his spirit so that it may encompass the realities of people other than he. Unconsciously, Scrooge may already have the sensation that his coldness and resistance to giving anything away are like links of chain binding him to a small space, namely, himself. Marley’s appearance in chains is a jolting image, one that an unconscious mind might want to be rid of or to understand.
Consistent with other accounts of ghost visitation, Marley appears bearing physical traits and details—“pigtail, usual waistcoat”—sufficient to assure Scrooge that the visitor is his old partner.
Romans 14:12
[46] Marley’s chain gives an account of his actions on earth, as every man must do before God (Romans 14:12).
12 So then, each of us will be accountable to God.[a]
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.
John 3:17
17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
For thousands of years, different parts of the body were thought to be sources for different emotions; the bowels were referred to as the seat of compassion, as in 1 John 3:17 (ft/V): “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” In Carol, if Marley lacked bowels, he lacked compassion.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
‘How now!’ said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. ‘What do you want with me?’
‘Much!’ — Marley’s voice, no doubt about it.
‘Who are you?’
‘Ask me who I was.’
‘Who were you then?’ said Scrooge, raising his voice. ‘You’re particular, for a shade.’ He was going to say ‘to a shade,’ but substituted this, as more appropriate.
‘In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.’
‘Can you — can you sit down?’ asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.
‘I can.’
‘Do it, then.’
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
‘You don’t believe in me,’ observed the Ghost.
‘I don’t.’ said Scrooge.
‘What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Scrooge.
‘Why do you doubt your senses?’
‘Because,’ said Scrooge, ‘a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’
6. Bad digestion
Still hoping bad digestion will be the explanation, Scrooge cracks an almost funny joke: “There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.
7. Hot Vapour
Dickens’s use of “hot vapour from an oven” recalls the flames of hell
The Door Knocker Scrooge meets the ghost of Marley